As part of its plan to stimulate the U.S. housing market and address the economic challenges facing our nation, Congress has passed new legislation that:

• Extends the First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit of up to $8,000 to first-time home buyers until April 30, 2010.
• Expands the credit to grant up to $6,500 credit to current home owners purchasing a new or existing home between November 7, 2009 and April 30, 2010.

Click here for more information,Realtor.org ,

2 cups stone ground meal
1 cup corn flour or all purpose flour
or
3 cups stone ground corn meal if corn meal is very finely ground so that it contains flour as well as corn meal

2-3/4 cups buttermilk
1-1/2 tsp soda
1-1/2 tsp salt
1 tblsp baking powder
3 eggs
1/4 cup oil(sunflower)

Mix all ingredients thoroughly. bake 15 minutes in WELL GREASED, VERY HOT iron skillet, iron corn stick pans or muffin tins in preheated 450 degree(F) oven. Serve HOT with GREAT slabs of butter.

Yield 1 9″ square iron skillet & 1 8″ round iron skillet loaves

From DailyFinance, by Tom Johansmeyer

Cancel your flight to Amsterdam – the U.S. just got its first marijuana cafe on Friday. Located in Portland, Ore., the Cannabis Cafe shows how attitudes have changed since the Obama administration moved into the White House. A month ago, President Barack Obama told federal attorneys to ease off medical marijuana prosecutions.

The widening use of medicinal marijuana has forced governments into a tenuous legal balancing act, according to a Reuters report. Some states passed legislation to allow it, starting with California in 1996. Nonetheless, a federal ban remains in place. The operation of businesses like the Cannabis Cafe, as well as marijuana establishments in California, has been possible as long as federal authorities have chosen not to pursue them. Unlike the shops in California, though, the Portland establishment is the first in the U.S. where certified medical marijuana users can both acquire and consume their marijuana, as long as they stay out of public view.

From The Guardian,

Accordng to the New York Magazine the full English breakfast is taking their city by storm. The great British fry-up, fuel of wiry miners, noble shipyard riveters, clear eyed young Spitfire pilots and cheeky cock-er-ney cabbies has crossed the pond and, according to the article colonised “not only at Brit-owned hotel restaurants (Crosby Bar, Le Caprice) but also at British-themed restaurants at American hotels (the Breslin)”.

At first it seems counterintuitive that hatchet-faced masters of the universe or over-toned, oft-facelifted mavens should decide to begin their day with something so relentlessly proletarian. And then one would have to ask why, in a city of obsessive narcissists, would anyone seriously order a plate of salty pork products sweated in grease? Why not a bagel and some of the admirable smoked fish for which Manhattan is justly famed? Why not a stack of their native pancakes and glistening maple syrup? A Danish? Why not, even, America’s greatest gift to the culinary world, the oversized muffin? The clue, I suspect is in the picture which accompanies the article.

There, nestling on the finest china that the Breslin can provide, are two fiercely trimmed rashers, a glistering egg, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms and a pretty authentic looking banger. Looks good. Also looks like there’s not a single ounce of carbohydrate on the plate. Sure, according to the article, the breakfast is served with ‘lashings of toast’ but it’s crucially a side dish. Where it can be conveniently turned away while the New Yorker chows into a plate of near pure protein.

Yes, food lovers, it’s true. The nation that convinced itself that Bernie Madoff should be put in charge of money, that George W Bush was an acceptable choice for leader and that Gordon Ramsay was worth importing, pumping full of wrinkle-busting collagen and putting on their TVs has severed the final link with reality and managed to reposition the fry-up as a diet food.

Are New Yorkers traducing the name of our national breakfast? Can it be a fry-up without a fried slice, toast under the egg and a big plate of chips on the side?